Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

Something i threw together with some fairly cheap parts i had lying around.

Specs:
Neck: Dr Parts
Bridge: Dr Parts
Neck Pickup: Seymour Duncan Vintage Stack
Bridge Pickup: Epiphone Les Paul Standard pickup
Body: solid Jarrah (split piece)

I didn't end up using volume pots and tone pots because i wanted to make this, my first guitar, as easy as possible.

Overall, the guitar weighs in at just 3.8 kg - the problem with using such a dense wood.

That's a very cool looking guitar you have there and I really like the shape of it too.

Nice job!

Nice simple design, and good color combinations. Don't think I'd like to have that much weight hanging off my shoulder though for any length of time. You are off to a great start. What's next?

I'm going to build a simple strat design with a Seymour Duncan Hotrails, and 2 Fender Noiseless pickups or some equivalent. Trying to find a nice piece of Myrtle to put on top of a piece of Queensland Maple...Is there a better pickup/ wood choice perhaps?

You're asking the wrong guy about electrics. I'm strictly acoustics, but I do appreciate a nice build.

needsmorecowbel wrote:I'm going to build a simple strat design with a Seymour Duncan Hotrails, and 2 Fender Noiseless pickups or some equivalent. Trying to find a nice piece of Myrtle to put on top of a piece of Queensland Maple...Is there a better pickup/ wood choice perhaps?

Pickups aren't maybe as important as the wood choice and that very much depends on what type of tone you want. If you want the typical thin, twangy (Technical term there ) sound that strats produce then the denser woods will give that. Alder and Ash were the original timbers used, the Jarrah you used would fall into this catagory, another good one would be any of the Rosewoods but would be cost prohibitive! Some good 'middle ground' woods are poplar/basswood (which are very light) I would say the Queensland maple you intend to use would be more than adequate too & would fall somewhere between the middle ground & thin sound, in NZ we have Southland Beech which I have used in the past and comes into this area too. If you wanted a more fuller 'Ballsier' (another technical term!) sound then the Mahoganies and similar 'open grained' woods would give you that fatter sound.
Different style pickups do give a characteristic sound but can be tweaked with knobs and buttons, the timber gives the base tone or voice to the guitar that can't be tweaked. Having said that, modern effects peddles can shape the output so much that even a thin sounding guitar can sound like a full noise Gibson through a Marshall stack...and vice versa.

Nice job... Just another note on the pickup selection: make sure you have the right spacing on the pickup poles to match your bridge. If you have a strat style bridge then you will need slightly wider poles on the Pickups... cheers, jb